


Conflation

by Nidor_and_Petrichor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Souls, True Forms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nidor_and_Petrichor/pseuds/Nidor_and_Petrichor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel can see Meg's true face.</p>
<p>She is hideous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conflation

Castiel was a four-headed celestial being in a mammalian vessel with surprisingly good vision. He had two physical eyes, in addition to a shifting number of the metaphysical sort. To him, the world was a place to be experienced not only through the regular worldly standards such as sight, taste, fluctuations in localized and global electromagnetic fields, and smell, but also through Heavenly observation of Grace, thought, intent, and various subatomic, cellular and extra-spectrum variation.

He saw both as a human and as an angel of Lord, occasionally conflating one set of senses with the other. It was hard to remember that those around him were not always, for example, able to see evil as a discrete and quantifiable element to a situation, or, conversely, that they were able to hear the sound of morning rain on autumn leaves.

So it was that with one set of eyes – the human set – he could see Meg as the others did, a pleasing round face set in a perpetual smirk, a mane of dark curls and a sort of casually calculated way of moving. He could see this side of her and find her pleasing to behold. He, too, was witness to her true face, however: the face of the demon occupying the flesh of an innocent, brutally overtaken. That face, that soul, had once been lovely in its own right, had once been human and beautiful in the way that all humans are, by divine design. But decades of poor choices had ultimately condemned it to Hell, where centuries of horror had twisted it into a new form, crooked and bent in the forges of the eternal flames. Perhaps not literal flames, as they meant little to an incorporeal soul, but metaphorical heat of torture and pain and hopelessness.

It was that, that demon face, that he detested looking at. It was hideous to behold, disgusting, a mockery of God's pure intent for her. And yet....

He knew his physical form to be compatible with hers, and perhaps that was what forced him to begin looking at her properly. And once he looked, really looked, not just with his eyes, not just with his Heavenly senses, but really and truly peered deeply into her twisted soul he saw... something more. It was strange, and different. Not a part of her untouched by Hell, but something new. Something growing. Something small, but bright and breath-taking, cradled and protected by the layers of corruption surrounding it. It was like a exquisite cancer, eating away at her from the inside and he could see it.

Meg was not beautiful. Certainly not inside, not where it mattered, not where he could see her.

But she was, inexplicably, trying to be.

And that– _that_ was beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm brand new to this fandom -- as in, I started watching in January and caught up to current just before the hiatus -- so I suppose I'm working through some justification on the current state of things, since I haven't been steeped in fandom just yet! No shipping agendas here, just playing around with some ideas.
> 
> Comments and constructive feedback is ultra-welcome: mold me into your own vision, shape me as you wish to see me!


End file.
